Testing

This week, and much of last week, the "big kids" in our school (and around the state) are taking The Test. This usually doesn't effect us much, other than being extra quiet in the hallways. However, this year our classroom is right next door to the SPED room. In fact, we share a door, which is awesome when I need quick coverage. Not so awesome when we have to be quiet to give the "big kids" the opportunity to do their very best.

Being kindergarteners, our natural state is loud. Very Loud. But our loudness is in direct correlation the our excitement about whatever we are learning, be it subtraction number stories or a hot debate over how many legs an octopus has. Boy, are we excitable.

So, it has been a bit of a struggle to control our volume these past few days. The introduction of silent movie voices (mouthing words with no sound at all) into our dramatic collection has been a hit, but only lasts so long. Using our break between lunch and specials (when testing kids are at lunch) to do our music and movement has also been a big help, keeping a sense of normalcy in our room. However, the reminders to use whisper voices are frequent.

Ah well, only three more days!

I love my job, loudness and all!

The long awaited field trip post

I know, it takes two minutes to import pics. But my kinder-fried brain has a hard time remembering to do that sometimes. But, I finally remembered, so here they are!

Our awesome parents that drove to help us chaperone the trip

A pirate ship!

Teachers kickin' it old school!

Shopping for groceries

What a lion!

Getting our hands dirty

Mechanics at work!

under construction

Tuckered out

If you couldn't tell, all of our kinder tots had a blast. After weeks of studying about jobs people do, they had the opportunity to play and experience them first hand. A great big thank you to the lovely people at OERB that made it all possible!

Hair

Over the weekend, I finally had the chance to change my hairstyle. In case you didn't know, one of my many quirks involves me changing my hair pretty often. I love to try on new looks and play around with the image/ persona that they present. However, due to circumstances beyond my control, I haven't changed my hair at all this year. All my kids know me as a teacher with black hair cut in a short, stacked style with sweepy bangs.

Until today.

My kids were shocked to see me new waist length curls with red highlights. In fact, they were speechless. But being kindergarteners that didn't last too long.

"What happened to you?"   and "I thought you were a new teacher!" and "Ms.S, your hair!" soon led into to questions of "How did you do that?" and "Did you dye your hair?"

They could not keep their eyes off of me, or my hair, the entire morning. It was quite comical.

Imagine the even bigger shock to find out that 4 others in our class got new hairstyles too!

Talk about a great hair day!
I LOVE my job!

Update: Sold

The ongoing saga about the sale of my school has reached it's apex.

Tonight , against the wishes of many concerned parents, our BOE voted to approve the bids and finalize the sale of two schools in our district. One of those two schools is my school. It's been a long time coming, a necessary evil in the midst of the current economic situation in our state/country. In the interests of everyone involved, the students especially,   the BOE selected the bids that would give the district the option to lease our schools back for a nominal fee for the next few years, giving us all time to make the transition.

So there you have it. We will be there for a few more years, but eventually, we will close and be consolidated into another school.

However still no word on the job front.

Even in the midst of difficult circumstances...I love my Job

Hard

I'm back, and I have the interwebs again!!!  ((Insert happy dance here))

Truth be told, I've had internet back for a few days now, but it has been all kinds of crazy and I am just now getting back to blogging. Between BOE meetings, professional development, and spring fever, a lot has happened. I'll be covering recent events in later posts, but for now I need to talk about today.

Today was the hardest day I have had in my professional career. Today was the day I almost gave up.

You see, I have the distinct privilege of teaching a little boy we will call...Bill.  This is his second time around in kinder, a fact I still don't quite understand (he's one of my best readers). Little Bill has quite a reputation in our school, one he has built into an identity for himself. His world is constantly filled with angry people, mainly people angry at him. He is known to be loud, disruptive, defiant, and violent...an all around "bad" kid. In fact, on the very first day of school he said to me "I'm gonna try really hard and be good in this class. I know I'm bad, but I'm gonna try."

Did you catch that? He knows HE is bad.

Breaks your hear doesn't it? It broke mine. I vowed I would do everything I could to show him that HE is not bad, however, the choices he makes are.

I'm not going to sugar coat it, Little Bill has been a holy terror some days...ok, most days. In fact, he had two suspensions under his belt for this year. However, I know that we've made progress. He learned to remove himself from potential bad situations, and to come get me instead of resorting to other behaviors (hitting, pushing, yelling, etc.). He sits and participates in our morning group lessons. He actually does his work, and then turns it in. 

Progress.

Until today. 

This morning did not go well for Little Bill. Disruptive choices lead to isolation from the rest of the group. He was angry, and chose to take it out on another student during the lunch/recess transition. 

I was positively livid. The mama bear/ monster teacher in me came out ( usually only happens when one of my tots is threated/hurt by another). I let him know that he was done. For good. Period. End of Story. Amen. 

He was no longer welcome in my class ever again. My principal backed it up with a suspension.He sat in the office the rest of the day, waiting for his ride home. 

During plan, I ran an errand down in the office. Little Bill asked for permission to use the restroom. As I'm walking down the hallway, I hear his voice call out "Hi, Ms. S____". I chose to ignore him and keep walking.

I regretted that 2 nanoseconds afterwards, but he was already gone.

In all the conversations we've had about behavior, I have tried over and over to help him understand that he is worth something, he is not bad, he matters, that I see HIM. And, like I said, we'd made progress.

And I destroyed, or at least damaged, that progress with 2 seconds of silence.

The beautiful thing about kindergarten is that there is plenty of room for mistakes, even for the teacher. We are all learning and growing together...which is really hard sometimes, but always worth it.

Even on hard days... I love my job.